Page 20 - Eloquence 2017

TM. Saju Ramachandran
Don't WTF our lives

Most of us reach out for our mobiles first thing in the rant, Important & Not Urgent. Push our digital dis-
morning. We read our emails, WhatsApp messages, tractions into the fourth quadrant.
Twitter and Facebook mentions and jump out of our

beds to immediately start reacting to what other
people have said. This in other words is executing a That Facebook picture to comment on, this political

to-do list of things that other people want us to do. discussion in progress on Twitter that you have a
We have already started reacting to what other peo- strong views on.They can all go to the fourth quad-
rant. This will give you time to plan things better and
ple want us to do than establishing our own to-do
move most of the time spent to second quadrant
list and executing the way we want it. What if we
spend a few minutes, before getting distracted by activitiesOne of the podcast that I listen to regularly

digital world, think what we need to accomplish for is from Shankar Vendantam. Shankar is an author
the day. Actor Aston Kucher has a simple way to who host a famous show Hidden Brain on NPR.
handle this. He delebratiley doesn't check his new Shankar talks about another approach in organizing
our time. Shankar suggests to divide our work into
messages till he writes to everyone what he already
what is known as Deep work or Shallow work. Deep
had planned to. This is setting to-do list for other

people than being driven by others todo list for you. work requires high levels of distraction free concen-
Creative work requires extreme concentration. Alas tration. This is the type of work that will push your
we have too many things to distract us. cognitive abilities and require uninterrupted though
process to deliver quality work. You must have read
about famous authors recluse themselves into the
lonely places to concentrate on their job. Mark

Twain apparently had a cabin s far from his house
to let him write undistracted, his family members

had to blow a horn to catch his attention. JK Rowl-
ing too worked out of a hotel too to finish Harry Pot-
ter. You cannot multitask while you are engaged in

deep work. Shallow work is not so demanding and
can be performed while distracted. This includes
most of what we do including our digital distractions.

Famous author Stephen Covey's Time Management The key is to understand what is deep and what is
Matrix could help us fight this problem. This matrix shallow and give undivided attention to the tasks

helps us classify activities that deserve our attention that are important.
to four different quadrants. The smart one among us

would want our activities to be in the second quad-

"A seed grows with no sound but a Tree falls with huge noise. Destruction has noise..

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